1. Field
The present disclosure is related to image processing.
2. Description of the Prior Art
By way of background, when a product is offered for sale at a retail shopping venue, the product may be put on display to depict how it will appear when used for its intended purpose, thereby allowing visualization-assisted product transactions, such as product acquisition. This is particularly the case when the product is for use in combination with other products. As one example, a clothing retailer may place a mannequin in a store front window to display an outfit consisting of items that can be worn together. This allows potential customers to readily visualize how that particular set of clothing items will look when worn in combination as an outfit. Customers may then try on the same outfit to see how it looks on them. Or they may mix and match clothing items to create different outfits that they can try on before making a purchase decision.
Visualization-assisted product transactions are more challenging when physical goods are not on hand, and only images are available, such as at Internet websites. For example, clothing vendor websites may display images of clothing separately from one another, or arranged in random combinations, making it difficult to visualize how the items will look when actually worn. Some clothing vendor websites do present images of human models wearing outfits. However, these images are fixed. As far as known, there is no ability for customers to dynamically create properly-proportioned images with customer-selected clothing combinations. Nor is there any ability to dynamically create images that allow the customers to visualize themselves wearing different combinations of clothing items.
To purchase products on Internet websites, a “shopping cart” paradigm is typically used. As an online shopper views products on a website they may select items for purchase using a virtual shopping cart that metaphorically holds the products until the shopper is ready to complete the purchase using a “checkout” procedure. An alternative to the shopping cart paradigm is the “one-click” paradigm whereby a shopper purchases an item using a single mouse-click operation. As far as known, the one-click paradigm only allows one item to be purchased per mouse-click. It does not allow multiple items to be purchased with one mouse click.
Millions of users utilize desktop computers, laptop computers, smartphones, tablets, and other electronic devices on a daily basis, for personal and professional goals. Many such electronic devices contain a camera, allowing the user to capture images, audio, and audio-video clips. Electronic devices are further used for a variety of purposes, for example, to browse the Internet, to play games, to perform word processing tasks, to engage in video conferencing, for Instant Messaging (IM) and online chat, and/or other suitable purposes.